The question sounds silly. It may be. But there is a fight going on in several states about what government medical insurance will cover. I am not sure that the benefits are worth the cost for the greater society.

I happened across an article in the Washington Post that makes an argument that it is valid medical treatment to get gender reassignment surgeries.

Services deemed medically necessary for some patients, such as mastectomies for women with breast cancer, cannot be denied to others, such as transitioning transgender patients with gender dysphoria. The same is true of other transition medical services, such as hormone treatment and facial feminization surgery.

The argument made here is “well, they do the surgeries for some” but not all people who need it. That is where the idea of need comes in. To prevent dying of cancer is a bit different than feeling like I’m in the wrong body. As far as I know, gender dysphoria is not fatal by itself. I qualified that because the argument gets made that a person is a lot more likely to commit suicide because of gender issues. There are interest groups on both sides of that argument, but I don’t think that it is necessarily germane to my question.

My question involves insurance, but more specifically, government provided insurance. There are a couple of things to make sure we separate here. One of the issues is insurance. The other is tax dollars.

What Insurance Is

I will never forget yelling at the television every time a lefty got on the picturebox to tell me about auto insurance. They argued that the government mandated that, and medical insurance is no different. The fact they intentionally leave out is that auto insurance is mandated by each state. Not the federal government. So the comparison doesn’t and never did apply to federally mandated Obamacare.

Another thing to mention about insurance is that it is usually there to provide help in case something unexpected happens. That is true for both medical and auto insurance (and renters, and home, bla, bla). That is why the government had to step in for pre-existing conditions. An auto insurance company isn’t going to fix my already wrecked car. They would go broke immediately. Same for health insurance. The individual mandate was meant to make up for that. If you can force enough healthy people to pay, then that would absorb the cost of those people already broken.

So here is where my question comes into play. Is transgenderism something that is an accident? Or is it a pre-existing condition? Or to muddy the waters further, is it something that isn’t a fixed state? There are a lot of stories out there about people that wish they never tried to transition.

If it is something that is fluid then insurance may have to pay for multiple gender switches. If it isn’t an accident, and is a pre-existing condition, then the system risks going broke. If the science on whether it even helps is on the fence, then is spending money on it worthwhile?

Take it From the Taxpayers

You have to answer “Is it worth making everyone pay for it.” The population of people who identify as transgendered in the US is about 0.6 percent. Forcibly taking the taxpayer’s money for something that some are morally opposed to for a very small population doesn’t make sense.  More so if the treatment isn’t really healthcare. The left is trying to frame this just like they do for abortion. It is healthcare, the government pays for healthcare, therefore they can pay for this. I have a problem with that argument though. While abortion may be legal, it isn’t right to make someone else pay for it. Transgenderism, or gender dysphoria, or whatever it is called doesn’t give anyone the right to someone else’s money. Especially when it is on such shaky ground.